


the blood running through

by ponderinfrustration



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - Selkie, Blood, Blood Drinking, F/M, MerMay, Nature Magic, Selkies, Sexual References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:42:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24407500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderinfrustration/pseuds/ponderinfrustration
Summary: A selkie comes ashore, brought by a longing in her heart, and saves the life of a land man shipwrecked in a storm.
Relationships: Comte Philippe de Chagny/La Sorelli
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	the blood running through

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from 'Heartlines' by Florence + the Machine

The salt of the sea is in her blood, its music in her dreams.

* * *

It was a moonless night when she came ashore, pulled by a thread in her heart. The rocks wet and slippery beneath her feet, slime of ages. Warm, welcoming, _come sister of the waves, come and rest here a while_.

She wrapped the skin of her other form around herself, and slipped through an opening in the cliff.

* * *

It was not the first time she had been ashore. Her mother, long ago, had taken her onto the sand when she was little more than a pup, half-grown, whispered to her of men and their deeds, of being ready. Showed her how to create dancing flames with her fingers, how to offer blood to the gods.

“The land men will try to keep you,” she whispered, stars shining in her dark eyes. “The land men know not of our ways only what they want.”

A whisper, a warning, taken into herself. The echo of the waves crashing into the shore.

* * *

The land men and their ways, their cruelty.

But she wanted to feel the sun on her bared skin, wanted to brush fingers through the long grass.

(Blood-borne desire of her people, to leave the water and walk ashore, for a little while)

She had seen the land men swimming, had seen their nakedness, heard their voices crying out like pain, like pleasure. Seen how they had kissed and touched and held each other on the shore, and lay looking up at the sky.

They never knew she was there, watching them, her womanly form hidden, waiting.

* * *

She made the flames dance on the rocks around her that hid her from the wind, from the pittering fall of rain. The sea was warm and the flames were warm, but the droplets falling from the sky made her shiver, chilled her very bones.

She slit her palm with the sharp edge of a broken shard of sea glass, and watched the smoke hiss as her blood dripped into the flames.

A whisper, an offering, for the gods to stop this cold falling out over the land.

The wind howled, a crash of thunder, and silence reined.

* * *

In the morning she found the land man. The mist among the rocks welcomed her like an old friend, twined around her bare ankles, and when she saw him lying there still upon the crags, she thought him sleeping as she had often seen these men do when pressed close together, spent from their acts. But he was alone, and the skins he wore to hide his nakedness were torn and wet, stained red, his flesh white. He lay there unmoving, his eyes closed and lips parted, that red blood on his head, seeping into his sunshine hair.

Her mother had warned her about land men and their ways, but he was bleeding. Why was he bleeding?

(She had never seen them bleed before. She had not been sure they could.)

She slipped to him through the mist, and knelt at his side. He did not stir, and hesitantly, carefully, she lay her hand upon his chest. The flutter of his heart inside, but no shift of breath, no warmth, and she moved her hand for to feel him more, his skin cold and wet and strange, as if the sea had taken him in and cast him out. The grinding of bones, crunch of broken ribs beneath her fingertips, ridges of them under his skin, and still he did not draw breath, did not stir, heart fluttering fainter.

She cupped his head and turned it to her, his skin so white and cold. Like something with the blood drained from it. Like a body left in the water too long, changed by the sea.

Not a body, when she could feel his heart struggling.

She tilted his head back and parted his lips, traced the exposed column of his throat, then pressed her mouth to his, and blew life into him.

* * *

The shifting of his lips, the fluttering of his heart beneath her hand. Those feeble lips, and she pressed hers to them again, blew into him, felt him tremble. A faint gasp, and whimper, his breath in her mouth, his life.

His eyes flickered and opened, blue. Blue as the sky with the sun shining bright.

She drew back to look into his face, and those eyes looked deep into her eyes, seeming to know, only a moment before they rolled white and closed.

His heart still fluttering beneath her hand. His chest shifting with his breath.

This broken land man. She took him into her arms, and carried him safe from the mist, back to her cave.

* * *

He was cold, so she lay him by her flames, and covered him with her skin. He made noises, broken sounds cracked, so she sang to him the song of the sea until he quieted. His hair was stained with blood, so she washed it and pressed the green sea grass to the gaping gash above his eye. His fingers picked at the skins he wore to hide himself, so she took them from him, and he stilled. He shivered with the flames, so she lay beside him beneath her skin and gave him her warmth.

A soft moan as if of pain, his breaths stuttered and ceased. She breathed life into him, and fed him her blood, and healed him.

* * *

She felt his bones knit together beneath her hands. She washed the gash close over above his eye. She traced her tongue over the blood that remained and tasted him iron and salt in her mouth, sea and land and air, and when he drew a deeper breath than before, and the sweat dried from his skin, she tucked the skin of her other form tighter around him, spelled to keep him safe.

And then she slipped out to find some fish.

Another land man, down by the shore. Like the one lying beneath her skin but younger, his face smoother, hair like sunshine and sand. She hid herself among the rocks so he would not see, and watched him walk, search along the shore, his outer skins torn too and wet but no stains of blood, his face damp and sky-blue eyes swollen red.

“Philippe, Philippe, Philippe,” the noises he made, young bird calling older one to return, and she tried to shape her mouth around it, this strange sound unlike the swish of a shoal in water or the rising bubbles or low bellow of a whale.

“Fi—leep.” Hush, wrong, strange.

The land man stilled, cocked his head as if he might hear her, and she pressed herself closer to the rocks, welcome and safe, and drew her hair around her face to hide herself.

How long she lay there she could not know, but when she looked up again, the land man was gone.

* * *

The land man in her cave was still asleep when she returned, hands full of fish. She had already eaten as she hunted, but he would be hungry and he needed fish if he was to build his strength, and she needed to wake him if he was to eat.

She set the fish down beside the flames, still burning with mother’s magic and her blood, knelt beside him, drew back her other skin to reveal his form. She brushed her hand over his chest, rested it at his throat and leaned in close, her lips beside his ear, to call him the way that other land man had called out to nothing.

“Fi—leep. Fi—leep.”

He shivered beneath her touch, gasped, and those eyes flickered open, to look into hers.

She blinked, and he blinked, and he lifted his hand and cupped her cheek.

More of those strange sounds, this call of the land men, but too fast for her to make it out so she pressed her finger to his lips to quiet him.

He silenced, and she did what she had seen the other land men do to each other.

She pressed her mouth to his, different from when she gave him her air, and kissed him.

Sea salt and iron blood on his lips. His hand on the back of her neck, his breath, his life, warm on her tongue.

She drew back and swallowed, parted from him. She had breathed that life into him. She would not take it away.

* * *

He burned the fish over the flames and ate it. The smell was wrong, unnatural, and when he offered her some, she shied back and wrapped her skin tighter around herself.

He made another one of those strange sounds, with a hiss and a softness, and ate the fish. The sharp edge of sea glass to cut the flesh, his long fingers tearing out the meat, those flashing white teeth.

These land men and their ways. Why are they the way they are?

She closed her eyes to save herself from having to watch.

* * *

He put the bones outside the cave. As he lay by her flames, she collected them and hid them safe.

* * *

The stars bright in the sky that night, pinpricks of light. The sea quiet, lapping the rocks, calling to her, whispering of its silky touch, its smoothness, asking her to dance across its surface and sink beneath the waves. Her flames flickering, calling her to stay. The fish bones ready for when she would need them.

The land man, sitting watching her, his nude skin glowing pale and soft, calling to her, whispering, _it is your time, I am what you need, come to me, touch me, caress me, feel me within you,_ and she ached to reach out, ached to brush her fingers over his skin, ached to feel his life in her mouth, ached to cup his sex, feel it in her hand like she had seen the other land men do as they lay on the shore, ached to feel it lengthen at her touch, warm within her.

Was this why the land had called to her?

The males of her kind had never made her feel like this with their songs and twisting, flashing displays, their gifts of little creatures. But this land man—she watched him as he slept. Watched him, and the flames, his fingers curled beside him.

Watched him, and dared not touch.

* * *

He woke in the night and came to her. Brushed his fingers over her cheek, lay his hand on her shoulder. His eyes so blue, blue as the sky and she tilted her head and cupped the back of his neck and drew him to her.

The flames in his eyes, the heat of his skin. The fullness as she lowered herself onto him, as his hips arched and he entered her. His hands gripping her thighs, his breath in her mouth as she gasped and shifted. The shudder running through him, pounding of his heart beneath her and she pressed herself to him as he filled her, as his breaths stuttered and the heat in the pit of her abdomen uncoiled, spread through her.

(Muscles, bones, lungs, all warming, all changing. Like slipping into her other form, but staying the same.)

He rolled her over, onto her back, and kissed her and held her, and together they slept.

* * *

In the morning he covered himself in the ragged skins she had taken from him, hid his maleness from her. The tooth of a seal had washed ashore in the night, one of her people, lost, and she pressed it into his hand, a token.

He brushed his lips to her forehead, and slipped from the cave.

She waited, and waited. When the sun was high in the sky, she took the fish bones, and sliced her palm, watched her blood drip onto them, hissed, softly, the way her mother had taught her.

They told her what she already knew.

He had gone to find his people, the other land man who had looked for him, his kin, his brother.

She extinguished the flames, and wrapped her skin around herself, soft and welcoming.

As the mist rolled in, she slipped under the waves, the water soothing the burning of her bones. A shift, a click, and her other form enfolded her safe, back into its embrace.

Whisper of the sea in her ear, _welcome back, my child, you have done well._

* * *

She swims beneath the surface, her daughter growing in her womb, hidden safe from the world. This daughter, the sea and the land in her veins, eyes the colour of the sky, and she will swim and dance upon the waves.

She will tell her, someday, of the storm that brought her father. The strangeness of land men, and their gentleness. And with fish bones and blood she will fashion the crown for her daughter to wear, a queen.

* * *

He looks out over the sunset rippling on the waves, and tries to catch the memory, the feel of the selkie’s lips, her touch, her eyes deep dark brown. Long, winding dark hair, tendrils coiling around his wrists.

In his dreams he sees her head break the surface.

He stands, and watches, and hopes.


End file.
